A surveyor's tale
by The Game Enforcer
Summary: A surveyor comes to a a distant planet to discover the fate of its unresponsive colony in lieu of the previous surveyor, and instead, finds a deceivingly idyllic slice of hell. When your only backup is light years away and might not even know you exist, how far does the human will to survive go? And how long does sanity remain a viable option?
1. Day 1

Note: This was created on a whim. If I had been planning this... well, I don't know how it would have turned out. Better, I suppose, but I guess this is sort of "fair."

This story is based on a single game of minecraft, but it is only _based on it. _If you look, you'll find things that couldn't actually happen in minecraft, as well as things that just can't happen. First though, you should know that I am using the Technic mod pack, so some of the ores, mobs, etc. are not in vanilla minecraft. Some of those are plot points, so if you're not familiar with Technic, then either look them up or just roll with it. I _hope_ that this will eventually be readable without knowing minecraft. That's my end goal. Regardless, I'll let you judge the product.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is...

A surveyor's tale

Day 1.

Well, I have finally arrived on planet 494949M. It's a nice world, and I see that the terraforming probes have done an admirable job of stabilizing its climate, but there is a concern I must voice. First, given that my predecessor stopped communicating a month ago, I wonder whether my assignment to 494949M is a blessing, or a curse. Certainly, I have been assigned to far worse worlds in the past. (I do not like to reflect on the living hell that was 190545D.)

My initial impression of the world was deceiving, given that I landed right next to an inactive volcano. I almost called for an immediate recall, having flashbacks to 190545D, but a glance at the horizon made me realize that the noxious haze rising from the ground was very much not a danger nor widespread. I soon discovered the colony site, and I must say I was quite impressed with it. However, it was abandoned, as my predecessor reported, so I left it behind.

Following the directions my predecessor left, I soon discovered his small base of operations, jutting out of the side of a small, steep, snow covered hill. Small... is too kind a word to describe the outpost. It is barely four meters across, and it is exposed to the elements, as my predecessor apparently did not have the materials required to autoforge glass. He also directly connected it to his fledgling mineshaft, which is a 3 meter by 3 meter hole, roofed by a wooden ceiling. The shaft is the only way to access the outside, as the spaces my predecessor left as windows would be difficult to navigate. Besides, only one looks out on the mountainside; the rest face out over the landscape, and I do not think I want to chance a twenty meter drop just to leave the outpost.

I did discover a stash of materials he left behind, which included several types of wood, a small amount of iron and copper, a good amount of coal, and, strangely enough, a number of snowballs preserved by the basic hyperchest's refrigeration function. Naturally, I will be utilizing these well.

While it was still light out I went out and surveyed the area. There is a large population of some kind of bear in the area, which I found to be docile unless provoked. (And not horribly dangerous even then.) There is also a significant population of wildcats, including one rather large specimen which I was forced to fend off with an improvised stone sword.

I discovered two caves I intend to explore. I noticed in one that there was something green embedded in the rocks, but I did not have a pickaxe on hand to deal with it. I will endeavor to begin my explorations tomorrow. Until then, I sleep on the cold wooden floor.


	2. Day 2

Day 2.

I decided to go out and chop down some trees early in the day. I now have a large supply of wood, and I hope to expand the outpost soon. The survey ship is out of range of my handheld transmitter right now, so I'll focus on building a relay dish and dedicated communicator soon.

I explored the two caves. The first contained a number of materials which I will analyze at length tomorrow, although I immediately recognized iron and copper. Of note, I ran across what at first appeared to be another human! He was in the cave, hiding in the dark just out of the reach of my torches' glow. I called out to him, thinking he might be my predecessor, but when he turned... well, I will admit that I was at first not sure what I was seeing. His jaw was... wrong, hanging loose and partly broken. He only had one eye, the other a gaping, rotten socket. I could tell he was a "he" because there was a tear in his shirt exposing his chest, and a hole in his chest which exposed a part of his ribcage.

He moaned, and started approaching me, arms outstretched. I will admit I panicked at this point, and attacked him with my sword. It took several swings to take him down; he didn't even slow his advance when I took off his arm, which was surprisingly easy given that my sword was made of rough stone. When I hit him in the head, he immediately went limp, twitching. I took some flesh samples, and promptly evacuated the cave.

I took a few precious minutes to regain my composure. Certainly, this couldn't have been one of the colonists? What could have reduced him to such a state? Hopefully, eventual analysis of the tissue samples will give me an answer.

Eventually, I did proceed to explore the other cave. I discovered that the green substance was uranium! I left it where it was and resolved to come back for it later, as it was at the mouth of the cave and I didn't want to risk radiation exposure. I also discovered some kind of purple gem, as well as small amounts of silver and tin, and an astonishing amount of iron.

I heard moaning sounds, similar to the ones made by... I hesitate to stoop to using that word, but it fits damnably well. You can piece together what I mean, I'm sure, but lord knows this isn't some cheap horror movie. I never encountered any entities like the first, however.

I did discover that this cave system and the previous one are in fact connected. It was a bit alarming to spot light in a distant cave, only to discover that it was in fact my own torch, placed there in my previous exploration. There are dozens of caverns I could have explored and I am certain that there is more to be found here. However, I decided to retreat before nightfall.

Then, I had two encounters right in a row. Two VERY alarming encounters.

The first was quite a shock. I was climbing back up through the cave when out of nowhere I heard a hissing noise right behind me. I whirled, brandishing my sword, expecting some kind of snake. Instead, I saw a truly bizarre creature staring back at me. It was predominantly a mottled green color and had four stubby legs at the base of a tall, thin body, topped with a large head. It had a face as well; if you can call two empty eye sockets and a black inverted U a face. It was advancing towards me, so I brandished my sword, calling for it to stay back in the hope that it would have the intelligence to do so. It gave no reaction, so I struck.

Then the thing exploded. I don't know how, or why, but it detonated, blowing me backward a few feet and taking a large chunk out of the rock around it. Was it because of my strike, or was there something more sinister at work? I don't know. I have never encountered something like this before, and it disturbs me for reasons I just don't understand. I have faced all manner of strange creatures before, and this thing was nowhere near as threatening as, say, the Omniraptors of 103321U or - dare I say it - the Magma Worms of 190545D. Yet, the memory of that bizarre, empty face, twisted into a hopeless mask of absolute despair... it troubles me more than any ravenous beast.

I retrieved the uranium on the way out. I wish I had a better place to store it than my hypersack, but I resolved to simply hurry on home and isolate it with my hyperchest's quarantine function. It was well into the evening when I emerged, and I caught a wonderful glimpse of the sunset. I stopped to reflect on the fact that at least there was a species on this world that wasn't out to kill me - the bears - when I spotted it.

What was it? I haven't the faintest clue. It was humanoid, but its proportions were all wrong. Its limbs were far too long for its body, and they seemed not to have any joints. It was pitch black, except for its eyes, which were a pinkish purple. The entire creature emanated a faint violet aura, and I found myself staring at it.

And as soon as my eyes moved to focus on it, it whirled around and stared at me. I didn't know what to think of it at first, and I stared at it horrorstruck. Why horror was my first impulse I may never know. Was it some kind of premonition?

The thing just stared at me, unmoving. I cleared my throat, and called out to it, but it didn't even respond. I just gave up and turned away, when I realized that in that split second... it was gone.

I whirled around, and yes, as soon as my eyes had shifted...

I felt it touch my back. I spun again, swinging my sword at it. It made some kind of unspeakable sound, and then it vanished, appearing again several yards away.

I realized that it couldn't move while I looked at it. It just stood there, quivering. I have no idea how that makes any kind of sense, but I used that opportunity to attack. After each strike, the thing would teleport, usually behind me. Eventually, I managed to stab it through the eye. It fell over and... evaporated, leaving behind a large green pearl.

I returned to the outpost, having recovered from my shock at the previous encounter. I stashed the fruits of my exploration, taking care to keep the uranium isolated from the rest, when I heard a twig snap.

Yes, really. I turned around to look out my window, and met eyes with one of those four legged green creatures. It was staring at me through the window, motionless, but pressed right up against the wall of my house. I recalled that the previous one had exploded, vaporizing significant amount of marble and smoothstone. I still did not understand the mechanism behind its explosive nature, so I did not dare strike it with my newly forged iron sword. Regardless, I decided to experiment on it.

Using a few of the snowballs, I first threw one past the creature's head. It gave no indication that it noticed the disturbance. I threw another past it and received the same result. So, I threw another, this time aiming directly for its head.

Oh lord... it was disturbing. I somehow managed to land the ball of snow and ice directly in the thing's eye socket. The thing jumped back a bit, but soon returned to its place next to my window, the snowball still lodged in its eye. Then, I heard a moan coming from outside, exactly like I had heard from the - to hell with it - the zombie, before.

And lo and behold; one appeared. It walked right up next to the green creature, which didn't respond in the slightest. The zombie - yes, I'm calling it that now - walked up against the wooden wall, and stopped. It seemed confused, and made a sort of quizzical grunting sound.

I panicked again. I suppose the sight of a rotting horror movie monster was too much for me. I started throwing the snowballs - yes, it was silly, but it was what I had at hand. I hit it in the face, causing it to reel back. I hit it again, and again, and again, until finally it backed off the cliff. I heard a muffled crunch as it hit the thinly snow covered ground, and then it was just me and the green thing, which had not moved an inch.

I then did something immeasurably foolish. I struck out at the green creature with my sword. I stabbed into its head through the window, right into the eye socket which was not filled with snow. The creature immediately crumpled. I assumed I was victorious, and climbed through my window to inspect the carcass.

The creature had shriveled up in seconds. I discovered that all that was left of it after only half a minute was a grey powder, which I stashed. Thinking myself very clever, I went to the edge of the cliff to discover if the zombie was truly dead, when I heard a hissing sound behind me.

I was stupid, but I was also lucky. I jumped off the cliff, no doubt thinking myself clever for evading the creature while at the same time panicking about jumping off a cliff. The thing exploded behind me, which sent me flying. As I tumbled through the air, I got a glimpse of the zombie. It was dead, having apparently survived the fall and then cracked its skull open on the stone wall of the cliff as it lost its balance.

Miraculously, I landed in a deep snowbank, and found myself staring at a hole in the mountainside where what I must assume was one of the green creatures exploded. I got to my feet as fast as I could... only to hear _another _hiss behind me.

I was faster this time. I bolted as soon as I heard the sound, and was rewarded for my quickness by only being grazed by the explosion. I kept running, not daring to look back. I spotted another of the black, humanoid creatures again, but I did not look directly at it, and it seemed not to notice me. This phenomenon requires further study.

I somehow made it back to my ladder. I am not certain that the zombies - I realize now that there are dozens of them at night; I can see them from my windows - can climb the ladder, but I doubt it, given the one's inability to navigate my glassless window. The green creatures need a name. I think I will call them "creepers," based on their habit of creeping up on me and attacking me. They seem to make no sound, save for the hissing when they are about to explode. Also, analysis of what remained of the creeper's body revealed it to be _gunpowder_. I don't understand how this is possible, but I hope that I will not be forced to stay here much longer.

I have blocked off the windows with wooden planks. Tonight, I sleep once again on the floor. I need a bigger house and a bed.


	3. Day 3

Day 3.

I made a mistake. Oh God I made a mistake.

Today, I decided that before I was to pursue anything else, I would manufacture a set of iron tools with my autoforge. In my haste to arm myself, I neglected to prepare armor. So, foolishly I set out into one of my nearby caves to retrieve more materials.

I was confident that I could fend off the creepers and zombies with my sword and battleaxe. I found much material; uranium, copper, iron... and then I found The Vein.

I thought I was lucky. I found it just as I ran out of torches to place. It had tin, copper, rubies, emeralds, uranium... it was beautiful to behold.

And then the cave spoke to me. Not in words, oh no. The cave moaned. I heard it so very clearly, yet I was alone. At first, I assumed that there was some creature behind me, but there was nothing. Nervous, I began to mine at The Vein. I was progressing well, but I had discovered that if I mined any further, I would risk dropping any materials into a deep chasm. I didn't have any torches to illuminate the hole, so I dared not enter it. Instead, I constructed a makeshift scaffolding out of stone, courtesy of my autoconstructor. I began to mine The Vein again, and the cave screamed at me. I don't know what possessed me, but I kept digging away at that Vein, and the cave kept yelling at me, louder and louder and louder...

I dug out the last scrap of tin, and ran. I don't think I screamed, but I ran all the same. Eventually I made it outside.

Then the fucking wolfman attacked me.

Yes, yes, yes. It's silly. It's funny. Ha ha ha fuck you. It came out of nowhere, big, snarling thing. Wolf shaped, but walking on its hind legs. Fucking thing got me with its claws before I made it to the ladder. The rotten bastard fell down the hole and I blocked the ladder above him with stone. He's trapped down there now, fucking bastard.

I know my tone has changed since earlier. This planet... it's wrong. There are things here that shouldn't be here. The creepers, the zombies, that black _thing,_ and now screaming caves and wolfmen? What is wrong with this Goddamned planet?

I will sleep on the floor once again. No, scratch that. I won't be sleeping at all tonight.


	4. Day 4

Day 4

I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the sounds of something human calling for help. Turns out the wolfman really was a wolfman. I killed him. I think he screamed for mercy. I don't think I care.

Weirdest thing, I keep being drawn to the caves. Is it some sick, masochistic thing? Is it a quest for knowledge? Am I fucking stupid? Lord knows I don't know. I did make a pair of shears and I found some sheep for bed wool. I hope it'll let me sleep better.


	5. Day ?

Day?

I don't know how long I've been here anymore. It's all blending together. I've figured out that if I kill the creepers they don't explode. Also, on an open field they're no match for me with my iron battleaxe. I've bested them for the most part. I guess I should just go with the highlights then? I found oil bubbling up about a quarter mile from my house. (It's not "the outpost" anymore. I've built it into the mountain, sealed it up tight. There is no observation window, not since that last creeper blew it up.)

I found out that there's some kind of giant that lives on this planet too. They're humanoid, about a head taller than me, and they tore my house out from under me once. That'll teach me to take off my armor when I sleep. Luckily my battleaxe fell down the mountainside with me, so I managed to kill the big ugly bastard before he could do more than break half my house apart. The plus to all this is: he destroyed the little ledge that used to touch the side of the house. Now nothing can get up to my walls, just my ceiling, which I'll be fixing soon.

There are these weird, living-dead... I don't know, they're freaking skeletons with bows and arrows and they die if you smash their skull or snap their spinal column. They're nothing, special and I've made a bow for all the arrows I get from their bodies.

And how can we forget the giant freaking bugs? Spiders and scorpions so far. There're probably a helluva lot more. The Colony's completely empty; hyperchests, the autoforge, nothing in them. I'm not certain what happened to the colonists...

But I've got a guess. I tested the flesh samples from the zombies, and it checks out as human. There is some sort of strange pathogen present, but its structure is like nothing I've ever seen before. In fact, my omniscanner's database claims that it is a new, alien species. Granted, I knew that the terraformers didn't plop down the creepers, at least not on purpose, but this is still a shock. This planet was rated as class M - ocean and plant life, no terrestrial animals - before, where did these... monsters come from?

So let's take stock then, I've got food (wild animals and tree fruit) a large stash of precious materials, and a home that is now unable to be breached at night. I think I'm going to make it, at least until the survey ship comes back.


	6. Day 1 Again

Day 1.

I'm starting a new calendar today, since I lost track before. I feel like a damned amateur, letting my sense of time fall apart like that. I need to focus, otherwise I'm going to die out here.

I've been doing some mining, and some more experimenting with the... less than friendly wildlife. I looks like I can kill all of them with my battleaxe, so far, with the exception of the wolfmen. (They apparently turn human at dawn. I tried to talk to one once. He was a perfectly nice guy, and long story short I made the mistake of allowing him to stay in a new, lower room in my house. He turned and tried to kill me that night, which made me very glad I had a door between me and him. I killed him the next day.

Other than that... well, the scorpions are definitely multiplying. I see them everywhere now. The bears are still the primary daytime carnivore. It's odd, but the bears are the only thing in this world I actually trust.

I discovered an unusual obsidian obelisk. Marked it on my map. I don't know what to make of it, nor do I have the time to waste on it at the moment. I plan on beginning machine construction soon.

I extended the mineshaft below my house. Using my map's cavern-finding function, I found my way into a new cave system. The haul from it was impressive; uranium, tin, copper (there is far too much for me to use at present I need to start working with it...) iron, gold, emerald, sapphire, and, in a brilliant moment of luck, nothing less than diamond and redstone - glorious redstone - sitting right next to each other. The cave screamed at me as I dug... but that may not be the right word... scream. No, it seems almost as if there is some kind of great machine deep, deep in the caves. Some kind of ancient alien foundry? Or perhaps it is something more eldritch than that.

Also, speaking of eldritch, a tree attacked me earlier today. I don't know why. I felled it, and strangely enough my omniscanner has identified the wood as "eldritch wood." I can't get it to elaborate.


	7. Day 3 Again

Day 3.

I set up a bizarre little sugar cane farm on a platform I built within the mineshaft. I'm running out of paper in this journal, so I figured I might as well make more. I went exploring in search of rubber trees to use for insulating wires, but I had to go venturing quite a ways out into a nearby forest before I found anything. I tapped what I could, and harvested the trees for saplings. I'll set up a plot near my house where I can farm them, assuming they grow fast enough to be of use to me.

I inspected the obsidian obelisk. It gave off a sort of unreal aura. When I struck it with my pickaxe... it exploded, sending me flying. It's gone, save for some obsidian that remains where its base used to be. I wish I knew why there's so much exploding around here...

I also found something very strange. In the forest where I found the rubber trees I discovered a large stone ruin. Within, I discovered exposed seams of iron and coal. That was all well and good, but what disturbed me was how utterly... _ancient_ this whole thing looked. It was easily two hundred years old, I suspect. The colony here was founded three years ago. You do the math.

I am beginning to suspect there is something odd about 494949M. (Beginning to suspect? The place is fucking crazy! Sorry, but this is hard to say with a straight face...) Certainly, a rather large fraction of the wildlife is hostile to me, but that doesn't explain the seeming impossibility of the creepers, much less the tall, black creatures... I initially suspected that the zombies used to be the colonists, but the problem is there were only around twenty people on staff when the colony went dark. I've easily killed twenty of the zombies by now, and they're outside my house every night. That, plus the ruins, would seem to indicate that there is another population here, somewhere.

Ah, but perhaps you won't understand the full implications of that... Let me sum it up then.

494949M is a planet that happens to be in just the right orbital zone around its star to support earthlike organisms. It was, until three years ago, populated primarily by sea life and plants. Then, we, the Human Stellar Federation's Mapping Command, terraformed the planet. It was only a light dusting, actually; we left the oceans mostly untouched, and since we discovered that the organisms on this planet are the same genetype as earth species, we just dumped some wildlife here, dropped the colonists, and left them to fend for themselves. It's just how we do things; if they find the planet has good material deposits, the colonists set up a makeshift spaceport, and we start bringing in digging equipment. Alien life forms are usually fairly dull; things on earthlike planets tend to evolve in similar ways. Chlorophyll is a good way to make use of sunlight and it makes the leaves green, four legs are an efficient method of locomotion, et cetera.

But the creepers aren't something we spotted in the initial survey, and they're sure as hell not something we put here. The zombies... I don't even know where to begin. Yes, we knew it was possible to engineer such a virus for a long time, but for something like that to emerge on its own, _after humans had been on the planet only three years?_ It's just impossible.

And those black, teleporting things? It's almost like they're not actually... creatures at all. More like some kind of extradimensional entities. I ran that pearl through the omniscanner, by the way. It called it an "ender pearl," and, as with the "eldritch wood," refused to explain what that meant. I actually did a search through the omniscanner database for things labled "ender" and I came up with an alarming number of results. What are these things, and why does the Mapping Command omniscanner know about them?

Something either went wrong with the terraformers, or the first survey team screwed up big time.


	8. Day 12

Day 12.

I tore out some of these pages once I realized that... well, my mining and deforesting exploits aren't really all that interesting. I'll just sum it all up.

I've started hunting the wildlife at night, which isn't that hard, actually. The iron armor I came up with is more than enough to deal with a wolf or a wildcat, not to mention those animated skeletons and their arrows, or the weak little pawings the zombies try to give me. I found out how the skeletons walk, by the way. They're mechanical, with little hyrdaulics working instead of muscles and something big grey and round in their skulls instead of a brain. It's not like any machinery I've ever seen but it's clearly artificial. The problem is, these are human skeletons. They definitely were people once, before someone - or something - did this to them.

I found out that the wolfmen have a bizarre _gold allergy._ No, I'm not joking. It's funny, in a sick sort of way. I've talked with a few of them during the daytime. They vary from fairly sociable to stark raving mad. None of them remember anything about who they were, in fact, as far as I can tell their memories only go back to the last night, although all but one of them spoke earth-standard English. Most of them have asked me to put them out of their misery. I almost always end up obliging. I've stopped talking to them... I can't deal with it anymore. I even know that transforming hurts them, I stayed with one once, as he turned. It was horrifying, his skin just... ugh. I know that it hurts them to turn, and that they don't want to hurt anyone while they're like that, but I still find it easier to kill them when they're monsters. I did find out that they've got some kind of disease, just like the zombies. In fact, the pathogens' structures are very similar. It's looking more and more like this is all being done on purpose.

The ogres... or, giants, I think I called them before... They're nasty. They break holes in my house if I'm not careful, so I've insulated the roof and floor under a layer of stone. God I love the autoconstructor. Anyway, I did some tests on them, and wouldn't you know it? They're humans with a disease, and it's structure is similar to the zombie and the wolfman samples.

I think I'm on to something. This world is all kinds of messed up, but there's a pattern emerging. I've made myself all but invincible in my house. I've used my makeshift rubber farm and my supply of mined iron to create a few machines. Nothing special, just a generator, a macerator, a compressor, and an extractor. I don't know if I'm going to need any more. The ship should be stopping by tomorrow, so I'm just staying inside until then. I've been living off wild cows, chickens, and occasionally if I get desperate, bears. (I love the bears, they're almost like my friends. They don't attack me, and they keep those damned wildcats away from my house. It seems like they also understand that occasionally I need to kill one of them to survive. I'm just part of nature to them now.) I also eat whatever fruit I can find in the trees, at least a few of which bear apples.

I've got everything I need to survive for weeks in my house, but I'm going to leave here tomorrow. It's sort of sad. Still, this is my big chance I guess. I'm not exactly unknown, but with this research on the zombies and the nature of the skeletons... well, I think the Mapping Command Main Office is going to be quite interested in me.

Until tomorrow, I'll sleep in my bed, listening to the cries of the wolves on the mountain above my house, and the gentle hum of my machines.


	9. Day 13

Day 13.

What the fuck?

Where's the ship?

Where's the ship?

Where's the goddamn fucking ship?

Oh, I get it. Ha ha, really funny guys, you got me. Great joke, really surprised me there.

Oh god, it's not a joke is it?

The ship's not here. I'm at the goddamned rendezvous point, and the goddamned fucking piece of shit ship isn't - fucking - here.

Oh my god.

I'm stuck here, aren't I? I'm going to have to stay on this goddamned planet until... until when? When will another ship even get out here? Fuck fuck fuck. I guess, if I'm lucky someone will have noticed the ship isn't reporting in...

But what if the ship left without me? It's possible that I somehow missed the time. I'm not 100% sure of the date, I might have just missed it... no, wait, there would have been marks where it touched down. The ship hasn't been here. I didn't miss it, It just didn't come.

Why didn't the ship come?

Did they get delayed? Sure, I know they were going to inspect the asteroid belt, but they should have been long done with that... There aren't any other worthwhile planets out here... so where the hell is the ship?

Oh fuck. Fucking God, hear my prayer if you actually exist. Please, for the love of all that is holy get me out of here. I don't know if you exist, or if you can hear me so far from earth - so _very_ far from earth - but please... PLEASE... don't let me die here.

Fuck it, he's not responding. Jesus is either busy, or he's scared of the creepers.


	10. Day 14

Day 14.

Scared of the creepers? That was a good one.

Well, if that's the case, then I've got one up on old Jesus; the creepers don't scare me.

Nothing scares me anymore.

I know how to kill all of them. The zombies die when you damage their brains. The skeletons die when you destroy their spines or the computer in their heads. The creepers shrivel when you damage their heads as well, as do those freakish endermen. (My name for the black things, inspired by the omniscanner's cryptic hints.) In fact, headshots are pretty much the best way to deal with all of these things, except for the wolfmen, who die after one cut with a golden sword. I've gone through two battleaxes and I'm wearing down my third, and I don't even know how many gold swords I've destroyed. It's not important. I don't think I should even bother to mention the giant bugs. They're almost pathetic compared to the real horrors of this planet.

I've decided I'm going to take a chance. I'm a level 4 psyker, which means that I can perform "alchemy." (I do so hate that name. It makes it sound like some kind of magic... which, to anyone who doesn't understand how a psyker's mind influences reality, would seem to be the case.)

The last time I tried alchemy, of course, ended with me losing an arm to a rampant transmuation that also destroyed my house, back on 190545D. How I survived it, I don't know, but my prosthetic arm aches whenever I think about alchemy.

Regardless, I've managed to make myself an alchemical ore scanner. It's a wonderful little thing, and it has led me to several diamonds already, three of which went into a beautiful pickaxe. Other than that, I've unearthed all kinds of metals, from large amounts of gold to traces of tungsten. This planet is the richest I've ever seen. Today's haul was the largest I've ever had, thanks in part to the ore scanner. I actually ran out of room in my hypersack, and had to leave all my stone behind.

So, that's it for tonight I'm going to slee

Wait. There's something happening on the mountain opposite my base. I can see figures out there in the dark. They're doing something, what...

Oh fuck. Oh what the fucking fuck.

That's not good, that's REALLY not good. That's a...

How is that possible. How is that... who could have...

I don't know. I don't know, I'm not sure I want to know, and I'm sure as hell not sticking around to find out.

Someone just set off a nuke.


	11. Day 15

Day 15.

I've decided. I'm moving out.

I can't be completely certain that mushroom cloud was a nuclear blast, but I don't have a geiger counter to measure radioactivity. I really should have brought one along, but I didn't realize that someone would NUKE THE GODDAMN PLANET!

I think what they were trying to do was blast the colony. (Whoever "they" are. I saw someone, or something, up on the mountain right before the blast went off, but they vanished before I could make out anything about them.) For reference, the mountain that got blown up was the one right next to the colony. If they _were_ trying to blow up the colony... well, what's not flattened completely is on fire and I'm not going over there to put it out.

The bears are all dead. The blast wave took them out. I survived by hiding in the mines until the dust and ash had settled.

When I got back up... well, it wasn't pretty. My outer walls were blackened, my windows were all shattered, and I had to put out two small fires. The hyperchests made it out fine, as did the machines, somehow.

I've gotten my Alchemical Assistant Device up and running, and I made myself a couple of hyperspace storage bags. They utilize my psyker abilities to create a pocket dimension... Yeah, they basically just let me store a shitload of stuff in a tiny sack. It's like the basic hyperchest, but it's portable, it runs on my psyker abilities, and, ironically, it holds more.

I've moved all my things into the two bags. I can't believe I didn't make one of these things sooner! The two of them can hold everything that was in my hyperchests, the hyperchests themselves, my machines, my furnaces, and my bed.

I harvested what I could from my sugar cane farm, and left it. The mineshaft is still intact, but I'm not certain about the structural integrity of the place. The hill was mostly hollow, and after that blast I can't imagine it will be very sound. I don't want to be around when it caves in on itself.

I tore up the rubber trees too, took the wood, made a bunch of saplings. I've managed to whip up some growth accelerating agent, so I'll make a new plot at my next house.

You know what? I think there's one thing I should say.

I don't know for certain that blast was nuclear. I really shouldn't have jumped to conclusions like that. All I know is that a big ass explosion went off on a mountain. It wasn't quite as big as a real nuke, and I don't think I'm getting radiation sickness. It was the mushroom cloud that threw me; it could absolutely have been a conventional explosive.

Of course, that still leaves the two really important questions:

Who?

Why?

Actually, scratch that. Let's just take the second one and simplify it to what I really need to know;

Were they aiming at me?

Actually, there is one more thing I want to say. To whoever set off that bomb:

I'll find you, and I'll get you. I don't know who you are yet, but I have a hunch you're the reason the ship didn't pick me up yet. Fine then, if you want me dead so badly that you're willing to blast a mountain apart, then I'll just have to do the same. I've got uranium and an autoconstructor. If you want to find out how well I can use them... it's your funeral. And you'd better hope they keep your casket closed.

You blew up my colony. You set my house on fire. And you killed my fucking bears. You've stepped on a land mine, you sick fuck. It just hasn't gone off yet.

I've set up a wooden shack in a small desert about two kilometers from my old house. I'm going to keep heading out until I find somewhere hidden.

The wolfmen are making a crazy racket out there tonight. At least I have a bed to sleep on, and a battleaxe to protect myself.


	12. Day 16

Day 16.

I found houses out here.

No, I don't know who made them. They're mostly made of sandstone and wood, and they're right in the middle of the desert. I've gone inside a few. There's not much there, some basic stone ovens, a few manual chests (same size on the inside as on the outside) and a number of basic beds. I'm not seeing any signs of recent habitation though.

This is impossible. These things look like they were made at least a decade ago. And again, humans have only been here for three years. I think what I was told about this planet was incorrect. Actually, aside from the sort of "patch quilt" terrain you get with cheap terraformers, this planet looks like it's had life forms on its surface for a long time. I've seen terraformed worlds before, most of the time there aren't any large trees, much less large populations of animal life. This planet has both.

Then again, things here grow a lot faster than on earth. I'd been observing that with the sugar cane farm and the rubber trees. I actually had to beat the canes back a few times, and they were growing in a cave. By torchlight.

Once I get set up, I'll do some soil analysis. Until then, I'll keep moving.

Oh, would you look at that? Another mushroom cloud! Fan-fucking-tastic!

Wait a second...

Oh... wow...

They got my old house this time.


	13. Day 17

Day 17.

I'm still moving. I've made it something like three kilometers by now. I'd built a second wooden hut, but after that last mushroom cloud I took it apart. No sense in leaving a trail to follow.

I found some dirt houses as well, in a forest just past the desert's edge. Not much in them, same as before. Who built them and why? There are quarries half mined, chests half filled with unspoiled food. (Which I took. No sense in letting it go to waste.) Who were these people and where did they go?

I think I can guess where they went, actually. They're the zombies, the wolfmen, the skeletons, the ogres. I doubt they stay in the houses once they turn, but there must have been a sizable population here.

But then where the hell did they come from? Humans have been here _three years._ Besides that, these houses don't have any high technology items; no hyperchests, no autoconstructors, et cetera. It even looks like most of this construction was done by hand! The colonists had more tech than I'm carrying, and I could level a mountain single handedly, if I put my mind to it. These people clearly struggled to build simple dirt huts. Who the hell were they?

I also found another set of stone ruins in the woods past the village. These are bigger than the first, and I actually ended up setting myself up in a little shack hidden among them. That's another question. There are all these buildings scattered about...

BUT WHO BUILT THESE THINGS? WHO WAS HERE?

Some of these stone ruins look old enough to _predate human interstellar travel._ That's... just absolutely ridiculous! There couldn't have been people here. Maybe some kind of alien life, but then where did the zombies and skeletons come from? They're all human!

I need to sleep on this. I've got plenty of time to think about it, assuming my house doesn't get blown up in the night.

Speaking of which, I saw another mushroom cloud tonight. If I'm estimating the angle and distance right, then I think it hit my first wooden shack.

Looks like someone really does want me dead.


	14. Day 19

Day 19.

Still moving.

Being on the run like this sucks. Granted, the Hyperspace Bags make it a lot easier, but I'm starting to run low on supplies and most of what I have isn't actually cooked. I could pull out a furnace and cook it all, but that would take too long and by the time night falls I'm dog tired from hiking all day.

On the plus side, tearing down my shelters is working. There was no blast yesterday. I think that  
I've managed to lose them.

On the other hand, they might have just figured out that I'm moving, and are watching me, waiting for me to go to sleep and then... BANG!

Oh, and WHO THE FUCK ARE "THEY?" This is getting ridiculous. I would assume that someone from the survey ship is trying to kill me, but those things 'aint no mining charges.

The only people with access to bombs that big are the military, and possibly the colonists, if they hit uranium and hacked their autoforges. Neither of those are likely. In fact, they're both practically impossible.

The military wouldn't come out here. There was a little insurrection on Bradley's World that needed quelling, or at least there was when the ship left earth.

So, that leaves the colonists then? Why the hell would the colonists abandon their base, then, a month later, blow it apart and proceed to try and kill me? What would be the point? Besides that, none of them had the technical knowhow (or the psyker level) required to hack an autofab. I'm an exception, being both a certified genius (I don't mean to brag, but my IQ scores are through the roof) and a fairly skilled level 4 psyker. (Level 0 means you've got nothing. Level 1 means you're receptive to telepathy, essentially. Level two-three means you can shift matchsticks-bend spoons. Level four, you can perform alchemy, reading, deconstructing, and reconstructing matter. There's quite a gap between three and four, as you've probably noticed.) I'm what people generally call a "lucky bastard." Or I _was,_ until that fracas on 190545D... and now the much larger clusterfuck that is this dirtball planet.

So then... there's one possibility left. I don't want to dip into the crazy bowl just yet, but I might as well voice it.

Whoever is setting these things off, they're probably not from the Human Stellar Federation. That means one of two things. They're either some kind of rebel group - terrorists, insurrectionists, insurgents - or they're not from earth at all.

But then again, I can shoot down that first option too; what rebel in his right mind - although most rebels aren't in their right minds - would attack a twenty person colony at the far end of known space?

If it's not rebels... then there's a damn good chance that...

You get the point; this could be a lot bigger than just a crazy guy dropping homemade bombs. I'm hiding out in a shelter I built within a small cave. If they're searching for me from the air, they won't find me so easily this time. I'm working on setting up a deeper shelter, but for tonight, this will have to do.


	15. Day 20

Day 20.

I think I regret waking up this morning.

Ok, so the explosive decommissionings of my past houses have not extended to my current residence. But... I think that might not be because I've eluded them.

I think I just camped out right in front of their base.

Oh, I didn't see it last night because it was on the other side of the hill I was on. It's not hard to miss in the daytime, a big, fancy, castle-house-fortress-base-thing, sitting nestled between a few little hills, looking all quaint and perfect...

Now, see, there's a difference between the ruins and dirt huts I've seen before and this... _palace._ Yes, they were artificial, but this? This is new, or at least _very_ well maintained. I don't know who built it, as usual, but whoever they were they clearly had aesthetics in mind. The level of sophistication is much higher than anything I've seen on this world, more so even than the colony itself.

I haven't taken a look into it yet. Why? Because as I was walking towards it, awestruck, I almost fell to my death. You see, between me and the castle is a rather large, rather deep ravine. I managed not to go over the edge, but it rattled me severely.

I created a makeshift walkway down to the bottom of the ravine, and discovered it to contain massive quantities of resources. Gemstones are the most notable, but silver, tin, and gold were also present in enormous quantities. I'll start mining it if I get the time.

Night started to fall, so I climbed my way back up to the top. That's when I discovered that the area had a notable feature that my previous residence lacked; there were ogres _everywhere._

Now, I've stopped being afraid of the creepers, as I can kill them before they explode. I'm not afraid of the zombies because they're slow and the skeletons because their arrows aren't very accurate and bounce off my armor. The wolfmen are allergic to my golden sword, and the spiders and scorpions are easily dispatched. Even those crazy trees that occasionally come alive on me aren't an actual threat, really.

There's one major difference with the ogres though; they destroy _everything_ in their way to get to me. That includes small hills, trees, and the walls of my house. I made it halfway to the mouth of the cave, backtracking while fending them off with my battleaxe, when one of them caught me from behind. I managed to embed my axe in his foot, which made him let go, but before I could make use of this another one was bearing down on me. I pulled my battleaxe from the first one's foot and rammed it into the second's chest. The monster toppled, but it was then that I discovered that my weapon was stuck so firmly in the creature's massive sternum that I could not pull it free.

The other ogre was recovering, so I was forced to leave my axe behind. I made it back to the safety of my house, doused the lights, and hid there until the ogres lost interest and went back outside.

I set up a second wall outside my underground house, so I'll have a bit of warning before the ogres breach my home. I've dug out a sizable area and created a large bank of high capacity hyperchests. They're costly to produce but they hold everything I need quite nicely.

I also made myself a new battleaxe. It saddens me to see the old one go, but maybe I can recover it in the morning. That axe kept me alive for a lot longer than I honestly thought I would survive in this little slice of hell.

Things are at least a little better than before. I'm sleeping in the largest room I've had since I got to this dirtball planet, and I'm deep enough underground that things won't find my house unless they come looking for it.

I get the feeling something will sooner or later.


	16. Day 21

Day 21.

I've expanded my house into a fortress.

It's a bit ridiculous, I know, but I'm doing it anyway. I've built many additional rooms, mostly expanding upward into the mountain. I also created a topside access hatch and a back door, just in case. Both are camouflaged so that it's not possible to see them from the air. I'm planning to reinforce the whole thing with insulated armor plating. Maybe I'll start doing that tomorrow.

I've set up an alchemical energy collector as well. It's still running, as I managed to synthesize some glowstone with it during the day. Very useful stuff, glowstone. There was tons of it on 190545D, although me and my team there never did find out how it formed exactly. I did learn its alchemical pattern, so I've been able to make quite a large quantity of the stuff. It's still much easier to use torches to light my house though.

Actually, this is the second collector I've built. Why? Because FUCKING CREEPER, that's why.

I was working with the collector's controls, completely oblivious, and then BANG. I'm sitting in a crater, my head is spinning, and the collector is in pieces. Wonderful way to start the day, eh?

On a brighter note, I made myself - oh heavens yes - a destruction catalyst.

Do you know what a destruction catalyst is? Do you? It's quite possibly the best device mankind has ever invented, unless you count the things that it can be used to create later.

"Why is it so damn wonderful" you ask? Because, if you have a steady supply of redstone, it harnesses your psyker powers and basically says to the 144 square meters of cave in front of you "Fuck your existence." Of course, it then leaves all of that matter tucked away inside a handy little hyperpouch, to be sifted through later. The stone, dirt, and gravel get converted into EMC (alchemical power, basically) the ores get macerated into dust and THEN converted into either ingots or EMC (it depends on my mood, really, as well as what I want to be construct next) and anything else gets thrown in a hyperchest, until I decide if I want to use them, or turn them into EMC. (Have I mentioned I like EMC?)

I dug down deep, and started using the catalyst as I prevously said. My stores of materials are filled to bursting.

I've got a level 3 Klein Star. (The manual insists on calling it a "Klein Star Drei," but that's just silly. "Drei?" It's not like using German numbers is going to matter in the slightest.) It's handy for storing all the wonderful EMC that I've racked up. That stuff is worth its weight in gold. (Literally.)

Alchemy is fun. I haven't had this much fun mining in ages. On the down side, I have to keep erecting stone pillars in the spaces I create with my catalyst. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll end up sinking the mountain above me.

Oh, one more thing. I've encountered a new form of... "infected" while mining. There were two of them, short, warty, deformed little things. They actually had armor on, which isn't something I've seen before. They came at me, followed closely by some kind of large caterpillar-like thing. I dispatched them all with my new axe, and climbed back up the mineshaft for the night. These things just aren't fazing me anymore.

I intend to explore the palace tomorrow. Until then, I have the screams of the mountain to lull me to sleep.


	17. Day 22

-Note: To rachet122. I wouldn't mind, but... well, read the next chapter, and you might reconsider. Unless you've got some serious 3D skills, this next chapter is going to be completely impossible to translate to actual minecraft. Regardless, if you want to try, I'm not going to stop you.

On the other hand, if you're talking a dramatic reading style series... then go for it!

-End Note.

Day 22.

I went over there today. To the palace, I mean.

Alright, before I explain what I found over there, I should first get this out of the way -

I've made my house nearly invincible.

I've stripped out the stone and dirt and encased my house inside the mountain entirely inside a cocoon of reinforced metal plating. Nothing, as far as I know, could break in here now. I've reinforced all the doors, which all require access codes to open from the outside. I've even armored the topside escape hatch, as well as the mine entrance below my home. I went hunting, and stocked up on cow, pig, bird, fish, whatever I could find that was edible. I have enough food for months down here.

I just hope this will be enough.

So... I guess I should relate what was over there, huh?

I built a bridge across the ravine. I haven't gotten to mining that yet, and the way things are looking now I won't get one for a long time. Regardless, the trek over to the palace was easy enough. I had the good sense to bring my destruction catalyst with me, along with my standard pick and iron battleaxe. Things seemed fine as I opened the door. At first, I was greeted by a rather large lobby. No one was inside, so I just sort of shrugged and walked through the next door.

The whole structure went down quite a ways. I know there were at least nine levels, because I saw that many. The first was nothing special, just a large, empty room with a single spiral staircase in the center of the room, heading down.

The second level... took me by surprise, to say the least. There were _people _down there! I almost called out to them before I realized that they were all asleep. Not just asleep, mind you; they were all inside what I think were some kind of hibernation pods, completely naked. All of them were female, and in maybe their late teens or twenties. Why? Don't ask me. Well, actually, I do know why... but I'll save that tidbit for my trip back up. At the time, I just thought that something was off about their proportions, but I didn't get it, not then. I didn't see any way to get them out of their prisons, save for breaking their pods. Breaking stasis pods is a terrible idea, at least on Federation starships. It will almost certainly kill the person inside. I saw no way to rescue them, so I steeled myself. The staircase continued down, and so did I.

The next level was where I saw the ogres and zombies. There were cages all around the staircase, twenty ogres to a cage, penned up like animals, and forty zombies to a cage, squeezed together even tighter. Some of the ogres were gorging themselves on what I at first assumed to be an animal carcass. I squinted, and I realized that it was no such thing. It was another goddamned ogre. The same one I had killed a few nights before. My goddamn battleaxe was still in its chest. The ogres were too busy with their eating to notice me, so I kept descending, wondering what the hell this place was.

The next, well... I don't really know. There were more cages, and in them there were creatures I didn't immediately recognize. I realized, after a moment of staring, that they were the same kind of mutated, stunted, human that I had just recently encountered in the mines. Their cages were odd, in that they had holes in the back wall, which led off into some kind of cave system. All but one of the cages were empty. In that cage, there were six of the creatures, all of them huddled around a pile of roughly made golden armor. One of them reached out to grab a helmet, and another fastened his teeth on the former's arm. It wasn't long before the others joined in, clawing each other to pieces in pursuit of the shining armor. One of them grabbed a breastplate from the pile and bolted, causing a large amount of distress among the other creatures, who all charged into the tunnel after him. I descended again, with more questions than before.

Level five was where I realized just how deep the shit I'd stepped in was. Marianas Trench deep. What I witnessed... well, I can say for certain I know where the skeletons come from. There are a bunch of mechanical arms that take the dead zombies, or maybe just any of the mutants who are already dead or too weak to fight, and melt all the skin right off in huge acid vats. At least one of them - I think he was a wolfman with a broken leg or something - was screaming the whole time. Fucking hell... I haven't heard someone scream like that since back on 190545D, when the magma worms got Haley...

Enough.

The mechanical arms douse the body in the chemicals until only then head remains. Once they get the flesh and organs out, they rig up a bunch of motors to the skeleton. They cut open the skull and pull out the brain, severing it from the spine in the process. Then they stick in something that looks like a metal brain, and they have a footsoldier... or something. The whole process was automated, extremely efficient. There was a lot of machinery, but it was all... _organic_ looking. I couldn't stand it. I had to leave, and for some reason my feet took me down.

Level six was the level where I realized that the Marianas Trench had been a bad metaphor. This shit was deeper than the earth was wide. Level six was creeper production.

They were grown. In big pods, like the ones on level two. Only these pods didn't have people in them. There were creepers. Hundreds of creepers. No, that's not hyperbole. I didn't count, but all around the staircase there were pods along the walls, each one holding a creeper. The strange thing was, they didn't have faces. I didn't know what that meant, but then I saw one of the pods slide open. A big, mechanical arm reached down and plucked the creeper from its place. Another arm came down, and it carved the creeper's face on. I mean with a giant fucking knife, like a Halloween pumpkin. I didn't stay there for long either, and I still kept going fucking down. I'd seen enough, damnit! Why did I have to keep going...

Level seven was where the zombies were made. Yeah, I know, I thought they were just mutated by some disease too. Well, I guess I was wrong, because I watched the machines take a man - dead, unconscious, I don't know - and inject him with a syringe. It was fast, he started to _rot,_ right in front of me. Yes, really, I'm not making this up. I fucking wish I was. Something similar apparently was apparently being done to make ogres as well, and there were some guys who got injected to whom nothing happened. I think they were the wolfmen. There were also some that got turned into those weird creatures from level four. I'm going to go right ahead and name them "goblins" for now. I kept going. I didn't know how much deeper it would go, but I had to find out.

Level 8 was where they kept the wolfmen. There were cages everywhere, and all of them were in their human state. I saw an arm come down and drop one of the ones who had just gotten his shot. The others didn't pay any attention. I tried calling out to them. They all looked at me with blank expressions. I don't think they understood me. I just moved on.

Then... I hit level nine.

Well, if you're a literary nut, you might have picked up on the symbolism by now. Yeah, the whole place was a giant fucking reference to Dante's motherfucking Inferno. Was it me who made it that way? Hell no, no pun intended. But, the comparisons were there. Actually, if you take it that way, you'll probably have figured out the big surprise of level two by now. Good for you. It's still sick as all fuck no matter if you expect it or not.

Anyhow I hit level nine. It was the control center. And I now know who the controllers are.

It's the goddamned endermen.

What, surprised? I was. They'd all but disappeared after I left my old home. Actually, I only ever encountered them very rarely to begin with. There were controls all over the room, and there was an enderman at every station. Their arms didn't have hands or fingers, but they were clearly pressing buttons somehow. Maybe they're psykers. Actually, I'm pretty damn sure they were psykers.

I was stunned, of course. Didn't expect _that._ It took me a good ten seconds to realize that all of them were watching me. Once I did, it took me maybe a tenth of a second to start running.

I climbed, and climbed and climbed. Past the wolfmen, past the acid vats, past the creepers, the skeletons, the goblins, the ogres... and then I was on level two, and I realized something.

These were the only women I had seen on the entire planet. I mean... that's not right, is it? There should have been female zombies, female ogres, female wolfmen/women. They were all male. Every single one.

Then I realized it. I'm sure by now you can guess. Remember I said their proportions were off? Remember how I mentioned Dante's Inferno? Well level two is lust. Fucking fucking fuckitty fuck. Yeah, all those unconscious women? They were _pregnant_.

I fucking bugged out.

I found the doors locked, so I pulled out my destruction catalyst and blew out a wall. I ran back home and started reinforcing the walls of my house.

Why did I reinforce the walls? I think that's pretty fucking obvious.

I've got uranium, and I've got a hacked autoforge. Do the fucking math.

Those sick fucking endermen, I don't know what they're doing. I don't know why they're doing it. I'm gonna kill all of them and I'm not going to stop until every last one of them is a black fucking stain on the bedrock.

I'm not sleeping tonight, oh no. Tonight I'm making bombs.


	18. Day 23

Day 23.

They're set. There was no one on level one, just like before. I don't think they've evacuated, since level two still had people on it.

Yeah, that's what those poor women are. People. Damn fucking endermen... or whatever the fuck they are. This is wrong on so many levels.

To all of the people, the women on level two, the men on level seven, hell, even the zombies and the ogres, and the goblins, even the people who had their skeletons stolen...

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You deserved better than this... this mockery of humanity. I'm starting to think that the endermen set their little base up as Dante's hell on purpose, just to taunt us. So, they're at level nine, the level that holds the traitors, including Satan himself, traitor against God.

So the endermen are the ultimate evil, eh? Then I'm God's divine fucking messenger, coming to split the earth asunder and set the horizon ablaze with nuclear hellfire.

This is it. The fuse is lit. I'm standing above my little fortress, just outside the escape hatch. I know it's stupid as all fuck, but I want to see it go off. There are three charges. I set them up so that the first will - for a brief moment - propel the second and third downward, into the very heart of this disgusting machine.

That palace is going to fall.

I've got eye and ear protection, of course, but I just want to se

Ahem. Sorry, it went off. I had to duck inside before the blast wave hit.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The place is gone. Consumed in a mushroom shaped cloud of hellfire.

I'm going to sleep now. I'll stay inside for a few days, until the radiation diminishes. The bombs I made were fairly clean, as nukes go, but I don't want to mess around with radiation sickness.

I just wonder... did I do the right thing?

Sure, I destroyed the facility. I killed the endermen, and I put all those prisoners out of their misery, but was that the best option? Could I have freed them? Could I have _saved_ them?

No. No I couldn't. Let's think about this, rationally. There were at least sixty pregnant women, and there were who knows how many men. If I'm assuming correctly and they were accelerating the aging process somehow, then most of them will have zero education or life experience. They wouldn't have lasted a single night, and I would have had no way to feed them all, even with my supplies as they are.

God... I hate this fucking planet. "He who fights monsters" indeed.


	19. Day 24

Note: Ok, so first I want to say... FUCKING CREEPERS!

They ruin everything. Long story short, I died and had to run all the way back to my house (from the spawn, about three kilometers away. Needless to say, my stuff wasn't there when I got back. The nice thing about alchemy bags is that if you make a new one of the same type you can still get all your stuff. The bad news is that most of my really EMC heavy stuff was in my regular inventory.

The other good news is that I'm not going to make you wade through me getting my stuff back. I got invedit running, and I've successfully recreated what I had before. There's still a lingering problem involving a constant, recurring game crash as soon as the game starts, which I know the cause of but not how to fix. Anyhow, read the rest of this chapter (completed before my meltdown) and then I'll tell you which mod. (It's a bit spoilery.)

Day 24.

Hmmm... have you ever stuck your hand in a beehive?

I'm lucky that I armored my house. My nukes did nothing but char the grass off the hill and shake up the ground, but the endermen - at least, I assume its them - have been retaliating all night.

I think I've figured them out. Those strikes weren't nukes, they were orbital freaking bombardment. They've got _something_ in orbit, and they're dropping slugs on me, approximately once every 7.28 hours. How my bunker has survived so far is beyond me.

Well, that's not exactly true. I know how my bunker survived all this. It's alchemy again, go figure. When you've woven the atomic structure of the metal as carefully as I did while armoring this bunker, it takes a lot of firepower to crack it. Still, I've evacuated to a new location - damn that D-Catalyst is useful - and I think I know what I'm going to do next.

I'm gonna build my own spaceship.

Go ahead and laugh, I don't care. You're just a journal anyhow, so I guess you can't really even do that. Seriously, I'm acting like you're a fucking audience or something...

I'm setting up a hidden underground silo under a mountain a few miles from my bunker. It seems like the endermen haven't noticed it yet, so I expect the rest of my plan will go off without a hitch.

I estimate I will have gathered the required alchemical fuel and materials for the rocket in approximately two days. Devising weapons systems will come next, probably lasers and nuclear missiles. I've hardwired several autoforges together, and screwed with their programming so I can fabricate the parts I need.

I'm taking the war to you, you alien fuckwads.

Note: Yeah, zeppelin mod. Hey, if anyone knows how to fix it when the thing completely crashes, let me know. I made sure the "ship" (made primarily of Iron, reinforced glass, and with a wooden door, ladders, glowstone, enegrgy collectors and antimatter relays, several machines, and an alchemy pad, wasn't connected to anything that should cause problems, and my current theory is that the machines or alchemy stuff in my ship were the cause (or the reinforced glass, can't rule that out either). I've got a rollback point (when I had to run back to my house... oh the joy) but I'd prefer not to use it more than once. Needless to say, I'm backing up my map after every chapter from now on. That is... if I need minecraft much longer...


	20. Day 28

Day 28.

I'm done.

The ship is done. I've got it resting in a underground silo at a safe distance from my base of operations.

It's composed primarily of alchemically forged Carbon-Titanium plating, along with a few reinforced viewports. The same stuff as my house, mostly. There are three decks, a command deck, a small bunk room and an engine maintenance room, which I doubt I'll be using. It's got a long range Aeternalis conduit messaging relay, a sophisticated Klein Star linked life support system, high power nuclear reactor (double armored), a fully functional manufacturing section (along with an outer hull access hatch, for extravehicular component replacement), and an array of eight high output Aeternalis thrusters, and finally, the crowning jewel, a Aeternalis dimensional tunneler; in layman's terms, a (hopefully functional) FTL drive. Yeah, there's a fuckton of alchemical components, go figure.

The top layer of bunker armor is broken through, and the second layer is well on its way to breaking down. The third and final layer is extra thick, but I expect that it'll fall by day 31, just at a guess.

You know, this is completely an aside, but I think it's interesting how little we use Alchemy. It makes building ships VERY easy, for one. Of course, part of the problem is that there aren't all that many level four psykers, but even so, it seems like a guy with the power for it would never be out of work.

Look at me! I've built an entire tunnel network, armored a bunker against repeated orbital strikes, and constructed a bona fide _space cruiser_ from just what I could pull from the ground. Single handedly. In less than a week. I don't know why I didn't just do this right away! This is ridiculously easy...

I mean, I know we didn't really have high grade Alchemy until the brothers Alphonse and Edward created the (current) Elric System in the 1940s, but even old Hohenheim-system alchemy - with the focusing glyphs - worked pretty damn well for small scale construction. If I've got my history right, they even figured out how to make philosophers stones (although they did it in a rather bizarre manner, using human psyker power as a resource, which was fatal to the subjects and tended to bring up moral questions, as well as being grossly inefficient).

Why did it take until the 2170s for us to figure out FTL travel? We had Aeternalis power in the 2090s, so why did it take so long? We had the potential to crack the lightspeed barrier since the first Aeternalis rocket was launched, we just didn't think to try and open a portal with it.

But I'm rambling about alchemy now, aren't I?

I didn't even gush over the weapons yet!

Primarily, there are four high velocity missile launch tubes, complete with four nuclear missiles and thirty-six subnuclear missiles. The missiles will work well, _if_ I can get close enough. I don't know anything about what I'm going to be facing up there, but I've got something other than missiles.

My proudest achievement in this whole process has been rigging up my reactor and alchemical power collectors (placed strategically on the outer hull to absorb starlight for power) into a single shipwide network. I have turned my entire ship into a conduit for the largest weapon I can possibly create. A high power phased cannon array, forward directed. Realistically speaking, this thing would blow up my base in one shot, armor and all. I'd probably be able to melt a hole straight down to the planet's core.

The only problem is, it takes three minutes to recharge after one five second burst. I'd better hope there's only one ship up there. If it's a fleet - or a really big ship that doesn't go down in one shot - I'm screwed, unless the missiles are enough to blow up what's left.

Well, don't worry, journal, people are going to see you whether I live through the next day or not. Once I'm finished with this entry, I'm going to scan the whole journal and beam it straight to Earth as I clear the atmosphere tomorrow.

You know what... I just scanned this once, but a recent development made me come back for one more message. See, I got curious and tested my psyker level with my omniscanner. Yeah... something had better be wrong with this thing.

I'm a level four psyker, not a level six. There is no level six. What the fuck is a level six?

A level five psyker... there are only seven known level fives in the entire history of the human race, and I'm pretty sure most of them were created in labs. Why the hell is there even a potential level six on the omniscanner?

Ok... a level five psyker can basically use their powers to mess with reality with seeming omnipotence. While it's all been scientifically explained, it looks to the uneducated layman like a bunch of superpowered voodoo. Typically, by the time a psyker hits level five either their training or their cybernetic modifications have forced them to be incredibly specialized, which, in the four cases I know about, has led to them ending up as little more than living weapons.

I'm a level six. Level sixes don't exist. Ever. This is so impossible that it is literally... just no. I don't even... no. This is ridiculous. What the fuck could be wrong with my omniscanner? I've tested it sixteen times now. I even autoforged a completely new one and ran the old through. It was fine. I ran myself through the new scanner; level six.

I just... I don't know. I don't feel different. I know that level five is a fairly arbitrary level of power, mainly to designate people who can do stuff without technically using alchemy. So... how fucking powerful am I that the scanner calls me level six?

At least this explains how I did everything so fast... my alchemy has been supercharged to ludicrous levels. The stuff I've been thinking was easy is the kind of thing the average alchemist has to take years to learn. Looking at the D-Catalyst manual, it seems that I should be very, very dead given how much I've been using this thing. And that armor plating? How the fuck did I even _do _that? There is a lot of stuff wrong with this whole equation, but I'm not going to start complaining.

Who knows? Maybe this is some kind of divine providence. I've already cracked open Dante's hell, maybe God decided to hand me the biggest fucking psyker level in human history so I can finish the job.

This is gonna get interesting again, isn't it? I'm getting tired of interesting.


	21. Day 29

Day 29.

So, I'm getting myself completely prepared for my attack. I've replaced my armor with an airtight set, composed of the same material as my bunker. It won't protect me from everything, but as far as being prepared it's about as good as I know how to do.

This is going to be crazy no matter what happens up there. I've got food that will last about a year if things go really bad, but there are a lot of things about this that I can't control, such as will I even be able to open my helmet to eat it. The life support on both my suit and the ship itself should be self sustaining of a long time, but I can't necessarily guarantee the ship will still be airtight if I happen to need to use them.

This could all fall apart in a few seconds. I know it seems like it's redundant... but it really could. I've been here more than a month; probably close to two if I take into account when I lost track. No one has noticed this planet yet, and an unidentified ship entering Earth's orbit is going to cause quite a ruckus. I might even get shot down right off the bat, and that's all my work gone. Not to mention if I never make it there at all.

Heh. Yeah, this is going to be interesting. I'm fucking tired of interesting. 190545D was interesting, and by interesting I mean that it killed five of my closest friends in front of me. That's why I'm alone, of course.

They wanted to replace my team, or just to take me off duty. You know why I said no to both? First, Dom, Haley, Koji, Ellen, and Scott can't be replaced, I know that better than anyone. Second, I didn't dare face up to their families. I was the leader of the 190545D expedition, it was my fault they all died, and I didn't want to have to be the one who showed up at their parents' and kids' doors.

So, I chickened out. I ran from my duties, citing that I just had to keep going. I think old Doc Graves understood, that's why he assigned me out here; just a peaceful, class M world with maybe twenty other people on it, perfect place to relax and recover from the trauma that the last world had left with me.

Of course, that didn't pan out so well. I don't blame Graves; if there _was_ a conspiracy of some sort, no one in their right mind would let old Doc Graves in on it. He'd just immediately blab it to the news media, citing "the citizens have the right to know" and such. Honestly, I don't know how he's lasted as long as he has as head of the Mapping Command. He's ruined at least five megacorps that I know of.

But there I go, babbling about things that don't matter in the slightest. I'm going to be broadcasting this journal on every frequency, so the civvies are going to be picking it up as well. No one will be hiding this planet when I'm done. The endermen are going to bleed, and I'll gladly slice the throats of anyone else who was involved on the human end.

That's it journal, this is the last entry before I launch tomorrow. Until then, I have only my futile hope for sweet dreams...


	22. Day 30 Zero Hour

Day 30. Zero Hour.

Testing, testing one two one two holy shit this actually works!

Alright everyone! This isn't a journal anymore. I've whipped up a little trascriber for the upcoming day. It's going to record my words and start transmitting them along with my journal as soon as I break atmo.

Speaking of which, I'm sitting in the cockpit right now. No external windows here, that would be silly. No, just me and my instruments, which are currently telling me there's four meters of dirt and rock between my ship and the sky.

No problem, that's part of what the phased cannon is for. Firing sequence engaged... all safeties offline... we are good to- HOLY SHIT THAT'S BRIGHT! So much for the roof...

Ok, beginning launch, thrusters firing... we're off the ground! I've cleared the silo!

The bastards are on my radar now... yeah, just one ship. Big, but nothing that I can't break with my phased cannon, once it recharges. They just fired their last shot a few moments ago. If my calculations are right it was the one that blew away my house. They probably won't be able to fire again right away.

I'm clearing the atmosphere! I'm in orbit! The transmission is starting, which means that right now there might be someone actually listening to me! Hey, guys! It's me, a random surveyor left for dead on planet 494949M, or as I'm naming it, Fucktastrophe!

Sorry kiddies, I should have warned you to turn off your sets, this program is rated R for mature language. If you're old enough, or you just don't care, then take a listen, cause this shit's about to get really fucking LOUD.

Hey! Endermen, you bastards in the ship in front of me! EAT MY GIANT FUCKING PHASED CANNON!

BOOOOOM BIATCH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! This could not have gone any betterohfucktherearemore.

Oh you have fucking got to be fucking kidding me. That's one... two... seven... ah, wait, the computer is giving me a number, how thoughtfu- fucking sixty-two ships out there.

Ok, time to run like a little screaming bitch. If anyone from the navy is listening to me, a cavalry charge of phased cannons would be VERY much appreciated.

Firing first nuke with three subnukes... come on... come on... damn, they intercepted one of the subs... come on... another down, shit... come on... YES! Fireball time, bitches!

That's two-zero you alien fuckmaggots! Come at me!

Spinning again... phased cannon coming online...

AND BOOM! Three down! Ohshitthey'refiringatme.

Purple beams of death... interesting. Hey! Military guys! I'm not crazy, feel free to show up any time now. I'm transmitting live battle feed here, come on! This is the real deal, aliens! Seriously! They've got purple death lasers, don't you want to see the purple death lasers?

Speaking of which... oh fuckshitbitchfuckshitpissfuck.

My number two engine is out... and my three and four... and my one.

I'm drifting. They're catching up.

Time to find out if the Aeternalis drive works...

it doesn't.

Oh

Fuck


	23. Day 30 Checkmate

Checkmate.

Ok think. Think damnit. I've got no engines. My weapons are pointing the wrong way the phased cannon is on the front of the ship - smart move, that - and the missiles are going to get intercepted before they can make the turn.

I'm... out of options, aren't I? DAMN IT! I was so CLOSE! If this FUCKING Aeternalis drive was working, then I would be HOME by now! (sounds of fists pounding on instrument panel) DAM IT DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT!

That's it... there's a ship closing on me. It looks like they're going to board. Good fucking luck. I've still got that battleaxe. I would have autoforged a gun, but I didn't expect that I'd need it.

DAMN IT! I don't want it to end like this!

Wait a second... that's the communications light.

Someone just called me. I'm playing it back.

_"Yo! This is the Federation cruiser _Excelsior_. We got your message Surveyor [static] [static], and we're on our way to your location via Aeternalis drive. You'd better hope your situation is serious, [static] or we're both gonna be in a helluva lot of trouble!"_

A cruiser.

A cruiser's on its way.

FUCK YEAH!

Holy mother of fuck... there it is... There are no words to describe what I'm feeling right now-

[explosion]

Oh those beautiful fucking bastards... They just blew apart the ship that was trying to board me. Guys, if you're getting this, you're a bunch of magnificent fucking bastards!

_"We know, we know. Seriously though, what the hell is going on out here?"_

Fuck if I know. I'm just the poor little bitch who lived to tell about it.

_**"No colony then? That's a damn shame. This is Federation battlecruiser **_**Victory's Taste**_**, we're en route as well."**_

Sweet fucking Jesus. You guys... [sounds of muffled crying] You guys.

**"Not all of us are 'guys,' [static]! This is cruiser **_**Serenity, **_**on the way."**

_"Hey there,! This is battlecruiser _Gryphon. _We're comin' to your rescue!"_

**"This is dreadnought **_**Agaion**_**. I hope we didn't miss out on all the fun."**

I take back everything bad I've ever said about the military. [Sounds of crying] You guys are the best, you know that?

_"Yeah, well you still owe us all a round of beers once this is all over."_

Sure thing _Excelsior..._ I'm just gonna... take a little nap...

_"Hey, [static]? [static]? I guess she passed out."_

_**"Did you read that journal she transmitted? I'm amazed she managed to last as long as she did."**_

_"Yeah, I guess you're right. I'm pulling the ship into our docking bay. You guys clean up the rest of them."_

_"This is Gryphon, are you seeing this?"_

**"Agaion here. Yeah, I see it too. Excelsior, Serenity, get our princess out of here, us with the big guns will deal with this one."**

_"Holy hell... that thing's bigger than a dreadnought!"_

**"Maybe, but the **_**Agaion **__**is**_** a dreadnought and we're not backing down. Bail out while you still can and warn the rest of the fleet. I think we just started a war."**

**"Roger that **_**Agaion**_**. We'll get her home safe. Godspeed."**

_"Damn dreadnought captains always wanna be the heroes... good luck out there _Agaion_."_

_**"The **_**Victory's Taste**_** is staying with you,**_** Agaion.** _**Two sets of guns are better than one."**_

_**"**_Gryphon_ here, we're with you too."_

_"Damn_ battlecruiser _captains, I guess. Well, good luck to all of you. We're jumping._

_"All hands, stand by for Aeternalis jump to earth!"_


	24. Addendum to report 494949M

Addendum to 494949M Incident report.

While Surveyor Henrietta Mustang's report is, as a whole, incredible, there are several things in particular that stand out.

First; The OmniSystems corporation has denied that their autofabricator(TM) could have been used to produce nuclear weapons. This is being looked into by the HSF's psyker corps as a matter of interplanetary security. We cannot have just anyone producing their own homemade nuclear weapons, as you must understand.

Second; The production of a space capable craft under the conditions the Surveyor described is impossible. Even with an autoconstructor(TM), with settings in place to allow for large scale construction, the level of sophistication present in the Surveyor's craft is baffling. She not only designed it to account for atmospheric exit and entry, but she also included highly sophisticated weapons systems - including a phase cannon array, the principles behind which are still classified top secret. That she could have produced all this from just her autofabricator(TM) and omniscanner(TM)'s databases and her own knowledge is disturbing. Again, OmniSystems is being looked into.

Third; The item referred to as an "Ender Pearl" is registered in the OmniSystems database. The corporation has not made any statements as to what the item is, where it came from, or why the database contains detailed analysis of it. Attempts to recreate it based on alchemical patterns stored in the database have been successful, and it seems that the item exhibits non-Euclidian physics altering properties consistent with high order psyker powers, and similar in some ways to Aeternalis. Additional research is required.

Fourth; Henrietta's journal clearly states that she herself used an OmniSystems omniscanner(TM) to determine her psyker level. While the functionality for this action does exist, there is no record of any level six psyker being discovered before. Analysis of the omniscanners the Surveyor used to test her psyker level indicate that the devices sent out a coded Aeternalis signal the moment that they read the Surveyor as a level six psyker. It seems that OmniSystems has had a major hand in whatever has been happening here. Of note, the abnormal psyker level reading (level six) is present only when she is scanned into OmniSystems databases. On all other mainstream databases, she has read level five, although with statistical data that is higher than any other psyker on record.

Fifth; Once the unknown fleet retreated (battle statistics can be found attached to the main report), a dedicated vehicular surface recon team was sent down. They encountered the nuclear crater which the Surveyor claimed to have caused, as well as her nearly destroyed bunker. The bunker is consistent with her journal entries, as is the "palace" which she described, at least from the remains found at the blast site. it seems that a facility of significant size and complexity existed beneath the building, although we will have to rely on the Surveyor for details as to its purpose. However, the team determined that the facility was connected to a large cave network on the upper levels, and another network of more artificial corridors on the lowest (ninth) level. It seems that the corridors have been sealed with large blast doors, but teams are working to both breach the doors and find if there are any additional structures on the surface that are linked to the network.

Sixth; Part of the team did examine the caverns near the colony, and they also reported unusual sounds coming from within. The caves go far deeper than Henrietta ever ventured, and the sound does continually get louder the deeper one explores. The survey team has yet to find the source of these sounds, but they have reported that they sound like the workings of some kind of vast machine, corroborating with the Surveyor's somewhat jaded analyses.

In summation; both the planet and the OmniSystems corporation are being thoroughly investigated. The Surveyor has applied to be sent back to 494949M, citing that "[she] want[s] to go and find out what's really going on down there, with an actual [censored] team this time."

I have also applied for the posting. Indeed, the Surveyor's tale has interested me greatly, and I wish to, as the Surveyor herself put it, "find out what's really going on down there." I understand that the esteemed Doctor Maxwell Graves has also requested the posting, and I urge that he be approved as well, as he is one of the most experienced surveyors alive today, even more so than myself.

That is my report. Good day to you, and let us hope that we can discover what is secrets this planet holds.

-Ulrich Navidson, HSFMC Surveyor

Author's Note: I am planning a sequel to this story, so keep an eye out if you enjoyed this.


End file.
